No Paradise For Criminals Deported To Jamaica

By MARC LACEY

Published: March 21, 2007

One person's dream of being plucked from life in the United States and plopped down in the middle of winter on a beach in Jamaica is another person's nightmare. Just ask Noel J. Bryan, who had a grimace on his face recently as he cursed his fate in the sunshine.

''I guess some people might think this is nice,'' he said of the ocean view he has at a run-down resort outside Kingston where he is staying. ''There are people who would want to take a vacation here. But not me. For me, this is misery.''

Everyone at the resort agreed, for all of the dozen or so guests were Jamaican-born criminals arrested on the streets of the United States and then, after lengthy prison sentences there, deported.

There was a bank robber and people convicted of drug offenses. All were staying at the resort temporarily in exchange for manual labor.

Mr. Bryan left Jamaica at age 6 and lived for 40 years in the United States, even serving several years in the Army, he said. He is not sure if his late father became an American citizen and naturalized him.

Unable to prove his status when he was arrested in 2005 for cocaine possession, he was sent to prison and then deported in January to the island of his birth, where he has no relatives and does not speak the local patois. ''It's like being on another planet,'' he said of island life.

Making Mr. Bryan's experience all the more difficult, deportees are regarded as the lowest of the low in Jamaica. Not only are most of them ex-convicts, but they also have another serious strike against them: blowing their chance to make it overseas.

The United States, together with Britain and Canada, has deported 33,268 Jamaicans over the past decade and a half, with the numbers rising significantly in recent years as all three countries toughened immigration laws.

When deportees arrive, they find politicians and police officers blaming them for the island's spiraling crime, and neighbors and even relatives turning their backs on them.

''We are like the scum of the earth,'' said Troy McFarlane, 36, a double deportee who was sent home by American immigration authorities in 2001 after a drug arrest and sent home again in January after he had sneaked back into the United States.

Compassion for their plight is in short supply in the upper reaches of Jamaica's government. ''We have intelligence that many of these criminal deportees come back and are at the center of some of the criminal organizations here,'' said Peter David Phillips, the security minister.

''In an ideal world, I wouldn't accept any deportees,'' Mr. Phillips said. ''But I acknowledge our obligations under international law.''

Still, Jamaica's politicians frequently press deporting countries to slow the flow. Their argument is that deportees often find their way back to the countries that deported them even more hardened in lives of crime. And if they stay in Jamaica, many operate international criminal rings that reach back to the deporting countries, local police officials and politicians say.

The deportees are a dislocated lot. ''Many persons pointed to the fact that they have little or no connection to Jamaica and thus see themselves as outcasts who are not wanted in the deporting country, but who do not have a home to which to return,'' said a recent study of deportees prepared for Jamaica's government.

The concern about so many deportees returning is one issue on which Jamaica's two parties agree. ''It seems to me unfair to have to live with the failures of another society,'' argued Bruce Golding, leader of the opposition, who argued that many of the deportees had picked up their criminal ways in the United States.

The United States appears largely unmoved by pleas to keep the ex-convicts there. A study commissioned by the United States Embassy in Kingston in 2005, carried out by Bernard Headley, a criminologist at the University of the West Indies, disputed the notion that deportees were largely responsible for Jamaica's crime woes or that most of them were young innocents when they arrived in the United States.

''What do they think we're going to do, not deport Jamaicans convicted of crimes?'' asked one American diplomat who has discussed the issue with Jamaican officials. He asked for anonymity because he was speaking frankly about his contacts with a foreign government.

But as that debate rages, deportees have found someone on their side. Every time a new batch of ex-cons arrives at Norman Manley International Airport, a 50-year-old lay preacher and mother of four is waiting for them.

After their cuffs are removed, Evelyn Mason shakes their hands, feeds them and helps them call relatives. For those who have no place to go, she helps them find temporary housing, like the resort where Mr. Bryan is staying.They are wary of her at first, until she tells her story. Ms. Mason is a three-time deportee. She said she was thrown out of Britain in 1994 after serving three years and four months for a variety of drug-related offenses.

Months later, she said, she was tossed out of the United States after immigration officials in Miami caught her trying to use a fake passport.

Her last deportation came in 2003. She said she had been sneaking into the United States regularly using fake papers when finally one of the men she was using to smuggle drugs into the country reported her to authorities. She served five and a half years in prison, during which time she said she found religion and changed her ways.

After being sent back to Jamaica for a third time, she remade herself into the island's leading deportee advocate. Through her organization, Land of My Birth, she presses for the countries that deport Jamaicans to give them pocket money to help them get on their feet. She wants a halfway house to help them readjust and classes to teach them skills.

''I know how they feel because I'm a deportee,'' Ms. Mason said, her gold tooth sparkling in the sun. ''Now, I'm the deportee who is on the radio and in the public eye. I'm not ashamed. I don't care that Jamaicans look down on me. I've changed, and they can too.''

Photo: Noel J. Bryan working near Kingston, Jamaica, last month, after being deported from the United States. (Photo by Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times)